


Hitsuzen

by SkyTintedWater



Category: Clover - CLAMP
Genre: Canonical Character Death, Character Study, F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-02-10
Updated: 2018-02-10
Packaged: 2019-03-16 05:58:58
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,144
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13630095
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SkyTintedWater/pseuds/SkyTintedWater
Summary: Who is Oruha?





	Hitsuzen

Who is Oruha?

Kazuhiko’s lover.

Suu’s friend.

Singer.

Seamstress

Sister.

Daughter.

One-Leaf Clover.

Deceased.

***

She knew the day she would die. She knew the time, the place and even where the bullet would hit (at four years old she pointed and said, ‘Put the tattoo there.’ They did.)

She didn’t know how much it would hurt.

She could see it — a man (probably), dressed in tactical gear, high-powered rifle lifted to his eye as he aimed. A breath, and another, enough to finish her song. Then falling to the ground as the _crack_ of the bullet reverberated around the club.

She didn’t know who took the shot.

***

In her teens she wondered. Everyone else her age knew they were immortal — nothing could touch them. Oruha knew the opposite was true.

She studied any information she could get her hands on looking for the armour her killer wore. She knew the shape of his goggles, the way his sleeve was tighter around his left wrist than his right.

She knew the exact sheen of the metal of the sniper rifle, how it appeared black at first and then got lighter as he lifted it into the light, just for a second, before pulling back and aiming.

She looked up gunshot wounds and how to treat them and which was the most effective at killing someone.

 

She wondered why someone who seemed so methodical would aim for the centre of her chest, only an inch from her heart. A gunshot like the one she would receive was sometimes survivable.

Did they want her to live? Did they want her to die slowly?

Who wanted her dead?

***

She could feel her life shaping itself a certain way and she did what she could to run from it. She refused to audition for the school choir, even when everyone told her how talented she was. She got the coveted solo part anyway and was dragged kicking and screaming to the concert by her parents.

She sang beautifully. She wasn’t afraid — she had a few years left to live. Oruha just wanted to live them on her terms.

***

She knew she would die. She didn’t dream it or imagine it or see it in sodden tea leaves staining the bottom of the mug. No, she _knew_ , they way that other people know that tomorrow is Wednesday because today is Tuesday.

She was frightened and then angry and then sad and then, with a suddenness that surprised her, accepting. She only had a few years left and she was going to live them with a smile on her face.

Oruha knew she would die. She didn’t know about the people who would miss her.

***

The manager of the club is an old school friend and jumps at the chance to let her sing. He can’t pay her much but it’s enough to get by, with a little help from her parents’ inheritance. When she isn’t singing or practicing she tears apart old dresses and sews them into new ones.

They’re always black.

She dies in white.

The club-goers appreciate her songs and she appreciates them for listening. It’s all she wants out of life until two soldiers enter the club. She can’t make out their features in the dim, smoky atmosphere but their uniforms are pressed, creases sharp. Elite soldiers, then, high-ranking. (It’s been a long time since she tried to discover the uniform of her killer but the details never leave her.) She takes no more notice of them until she steps off the stage and one of them offers to buy her a drink.

His face is unremarkable, probably an asset in his job. But when she accepts he smiles and Oruha finds him very attractive indeed.

His name is Kazuhiko and the three of them quickly become two when Kazuhiko’s friend leaves. Oruha doesn’t remember his name, only that she and her new friend spent the night talking and laughing and that when Kazuhiko was six the one thing he wanted most in the world was a brother so he talked the boy next door into living in the downstairs cupboard. It’s cute and only a little creepy and when he offers to walk him home she says no, but that he can have her phone number if he promises to call her the next day.

He does, and she smiles. She had a feeling he would.

***

She never meets Suu. She sometimes wonders what she looks like — if she’s as young as she sounds, or if she’s a young soul trapped in an old body.

Their phone conversations are sweet, and never long enough. Few things are ever long enough these days, when she has only months left.

She doesn’t tell Kazuhiko. She does tell Suu, but only because she knows no one else will.

***

‘Who is this _Oruha?_ Are we supposed to believe it’s a coincidence she knows Kazuhiko Fay Ryu _and_ the Four Leaf?’

General Yamamoto has always been a touch too dramatic, General Ko feels.

‘How do you know about that?’ she asks, keeping her voice soft. Already she can feel the edges of his mind, and it takes all of her concentration not to let him know what she’s doing.

‘The Kill Dolls report to me to, you know.’ For heaven’s sake, the man is actually _preening._

‘I know. You made them. Because you’re afraid of Suu.’

‘She’s a Four Leaf! Immensely powerful! We don’t even know the full extent of her powers because _you_ —’ He prods her skinny chest with an equally skinny finger ‘— stopped us from testing it!’

‘Suu is not a threat to you.’ Ah, there. Memories are tricky things, but these are recent, and if she can strip away his thoughts of this Oruha woman and her connections to their top soldier …

‘Yes, it is. She is not allowed to have contact with the outside world. But since the only person she talks to is this … this singer, that won’t be a problem for much longer.’

‘What?’ General Ko’s control slips and Yamamoto falls unconscious at her feet. She doesn’t know what damage she’s done to him and nor does she have the time to find out. She can only run to the nearest phone and hope that she can reach Kazuhiko in time.

***

She doesn’t.

***

At the club Oruha steps on to the stage wearing a white dress. It’s beautiful, catching the light but not reflecting it. She looks like she’s glowing.

Kazuhiko wonders how she can look more beautiful with every passing day.

Oruha sings a song, her first and last collaboration. She puts all her effort into it.

It’s incredible, and the last note fades away before she feels the pain in her chest.

The club-goers scream, and miles away a young woman surviving but not really living in a cage screams with them.

‘ORUHA!’

**Author's Note:**

> ‘Hitsuzen’ means inevitable or fate, depending on how you translate it. It’s also a nod to XXX-Holic.  
> I don’t know if Oruha was a seamstress but I thought she might make her own clothes.


End file.
